In yesterday’s put up I discussed that gravel rider who went lacking, however when you actually wish to disappear it’s a lot better to make use of an e-bike:

Although you’ll additionally wish to use a kayak as a decoy:
Borgwardt was reported lacking by his household on Aug. 12, 2024, following a kayaking journey at Inexperienced Lake about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee.
An overturned kayak and lifejacket that authorities consider belonged to the lacking father have been finally recovered — main investigators to suspect that he had drowned.
Then whereas they’re dragging the lake on your bloated corpse merely trip your e-bike to Canada:
After staging his loss of life, Borgwardt rode an electrical bike 70 miles in a single day to Madison. He then caught a bus to Detroit and crossed into Canada to board a airplane in Toronto, in line with CBS Information.
Now that’s what I name being multimodal.
In fact, throughout my very own upstate trip I too was ideally poised to flee to Canada, and in reality I may have simply and cheaply obtained each the kayak…

…and the e-bike at Walmart:

Come to consider it, maybe the e-biker I noticed throughout my very own temporary journey throughout the border was additionally pulling the same disappearing act:
Truth I simply made up: 58% of e-bikers in Canada are fleeing Individuals.
Then once more, why would I run away to Canada or Jap Europe or wherever else when New York Metropolis is so fantastic? Positive, we don’t even have Walmart, however we do have extremely weird tableaus, corresponding to this one I occurred upon deep within the park:

It consisted of a number of dozen damaged eggs:

Varied empty six-pack containers:

A stuffed animal:

An orange wig and a carrot:

A pair of freshly-cut jorts:

And quite a few notes and graffittoes studying “White Folks” however with the phrases crossed out:

I’ve been making an attempt to place all of it collectively, and my two main theories are as follows:
Somebody was practising an especially high-concept juggling act however stored getting drunker and drunker till they broke all of the eggs
They held the Singlespeed World Championships in New York Metropolis this yr and by some means I missed it.
In any case, apart from fixing mysteries, after a extremely satisfying fornight with the Roadini I’ve additionally been getting reacquainted with my different highway bikes, particularly this one:

And this one:

For some individuals, the phrase “decadence” may imply ingesting champagne in mattress, or having a wild drunken egg get together deep within the park, however to me it means having devoted highway bikes for brief, medium, and long-reach brakes–to not point out Campagnolo, Shimano, and friction shifting respectively. In fact, some may say that I may simply use these new Growtac shifters as a substitute, however fairly frankly the extra I hear about them the extra they piss me off:
As I’ve famous earlier than, this stuff handle to remove one of the best attributes of each friction shifting (that’s to say the utter simplicity) and built-in shifting (particularly the idiot-proof nature of indexing) and mix them into one ass-backwards part, all whereas being dearer than any of them:

Additionally, they sound very sophisticated and annoying to put in…and in line with the video they’re now introducing “click on plates” so that they’ll index, go determine:

It by no means ends:

Look, all I’m saying is that on the subject of highway bikes there are two groups*: Crew Friction, and Crew Built-in Shifting. JUST PICK ONE AND STICK WITH IT.
Or, you already know, have plenty of completely different bikes, like I do.
It’s the one good selection.
*[Okay, fine, there are other teams, like Team Indexing Downtube Shifter, but let’s not overthink it.]













